// ORBITAL LOGISTICS AND PROPULSION TERM
Light Year
A light-year is a unit of distance used in astronomy, representing how far light travels in one Earth year.
TECHNICAL DEFINITION
A light-year is an astronomical unit of distance defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year (365.25 days), approximately 9.461 trillion kilometers or 5.879 trillion miles, used for measuring interstellar and intergalactic scales.
BACKGROUND
An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology industry.
READ MORE ON WIKIPEDIASYNONYMS & ALIASES
- LY
- Astronomical distance
- Cosmic distance unit
- Light-travel distance
USAGE NOTE
The nearest star to our Sun is about 4.2 light-years away.
DEVELOPERS
Organizations developing technology related to Light Year.
Directly developing technology for interstellar travel with its 'Breakthrough Starshot' project, which aims to send a fleet of light sail-propelled nanocraft to the Alpha Centauri star system, over four light-years away.
JPL manages the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, the farthest human-made objects, which are currently in interstellar space. They also research advanced propulsion concepts for future missions that would travel across light-year distances.
A research organization whose primary mission is to search for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. Their work involves developing and using technology to scan star systems many light-years from Earth for signs of technology.
Designs, builds, and operates some of the world's most advanced ground-based telescopes, such as the Very Large Telescope (VLT). This technology allows astronomers to observe and study stars, galaxies, and quasars that are millions or billions of light-years away.
The U.S. space agency operates deep space observatories like the James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes, which capture images of objects billions of light-years away. NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program also funds early-stage research into interstellar propulsion systems.
Operates the Gaia space observatory, which is creating a precise three-dimensional map of over a billion stars in our galaxy, accurately measuring their distances in light-years and charting their motion.
A startup developing advanced propulsion systems based on antimatter. Antimatter annihilation is one of the few known physics concepts that could theoretically power a spacecraft to the relativistic speeds needed for interstellar travel between stars separated by light-years.